Responding To Conflict – Part 3 — A ‘Time With God’ Audio Devotion

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Transcript

Good morning,

Welcome to a new day, and as you get into it, let’s start it the best way possible by spending some time with God. Do you know that God is not distant and removed from life? He’s not just up there somewhere in space interestedly watching to see what happens on Earth. He’s not just like someone in the theater watching the stage, no. He’s an actor. He’s a player. He’s in.

The midst of the issues of your life, God wants to be involved in your day today.

I don’t know what your day holds. I don’t know what you’re facing today. Maybe you don’t know either yet, but God knows, and God is there to be involved with you, not just to bail you out of tough situations you face. God is wanting to develop you as a person, to be who He has designed you to be. He wants to develop the character of Jesus Christ in you.

And He also wants to develop in you an inner process of life that’s going to result in the right kind of choices coming out of your life. One of the places in life where those choices are most severely tested is when we encounter conflict in life.

Man, I do not like conflict, do you? Of course not, it’s hard to deal with. It produces tension and stress internally that can just drive you crazy, keep you awake at night, have your stomach churning, conflict. And yet we need to learn when we face conflict, not just to instantly be seeing who takes which side or to lash out at someone or to criticize someone. Those things only inflame the situation. What we need to condition ourselves to do, to train our minds to do, is to first turn to God in prayer.

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Turn to God in prayer.

Just listen to what John says in 1 John chapter 3.

He says, little children, let us not love with word or with tongue only, but in deed and truth. We will know by this that we are of the truth and will assure our heart before God in whatever our heart condemns us, for God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Well, here’s God. Who even when our heart is responding a certain way and may be feeling guilty or condemning us or not feeling guilty, but God sees through all of that and He’s greater than our heart and knows all things. And so when you face conflict and you turn to God in prayer, the first thing you should ask for is spiritual discernment, because God sees through all of the emotions, all of the things that are on the surface of the conflict, and He knows the source of the problem.

And He can open our eyes to whatever is behind it, whether it’s jealousy or a communication breakdown or maybe even just a mistake that’s triggered the problem, or maybe it is something significant that needs to be dealt with. But with the Holy Spirit’s guidance we’ll gain insight into the problem that doesn’t come from an instant reaction. When a conflict arises, make sure and excuse yourself from the conflict.

Give yourself time to ask God to give you insight and as God gives you insight, very often you will know how to respond to the situation.

I’m John North.